East Asia I - John Ravenswood (J. Slauerhoff)

From: Oost-Azie – 1^ste druk 1928 -  Uitgeverij De Gemeenschap, Utrecht

Autumn

Vines droop and their blossoms, withering,
Shudder away from the deadly calm lake.
Hues drift there, horrifying
Tender.
 
Pine trees that reach to the shore
Stare in dismay at their visible shadow,
That hangs in the water, refusing to yield
With a ripple to the sky.
 
Enemies recoiled, we no longer know
To which arms to devote courage,
Life on the island in the lake must
Mull it over or run before the wind.
 
Shall we never embrace again?
Our skins’ trembling downs
Forgotten in heavy furs’ slumber,
Winter in the forest, eternal autumn in us?

Nagoya castle

Like a ship in eternity anchored
Lies far from the shores the castle in the lake,
The world averted, here unchanged
The realm of forest and water and of old.
 
Now the eternal wanderer wishes to cross,
To preserve his calm in the midst of the lake,
Whose surface the skittish winds flee,
On which no calyxes float, from whose depths
The walls rise, steep and closed
Without a gate, sunken are the boats...

Uyemo Park, Tokyo
 
The children leave their colourful play
And leave the park timid and abandoned behind.
The birds keep silent around an old guard,
Only the crickets chirp quick and shrill.
 
The green and red foliage equally fade.
A flickering light awakens in bronze lamps.
Evening comes subdued, shrouded in mists
Closer, like an assassin in a hall.
 
But solemnly drawn bells are rung
And long sacred tones drone
Above it by and the stern prayers of the priests,
Protected by the night in the shrine.

Inland Sea
 
White hills shroud themselves in clouds,
Sailing boats skim across the sea,
The waves rise higher, the fish deeper,
Trees shiver naked, stripped of foliage,
Windows bloom in soft red,
On the roofs the first snow falls.

The omens
 
White kingfishers sway
On sea and branches nearby.
She points to them and calls with clear
Charming voice: "They foretell
Good fortune!"
But I see more: from the mountain collar
A dark speck comes rushing down,
A black bird joins them.

Autumn
 
Far away the tight sky stood
Like a gray silken screen
Tense for death.
On this side a flight of
Birds wailing,
Over our heads, fled.
 
Green barely crept over the ground.
Sharp thrusted stems of reed.
The world stood defoliated
At the very end of season,
Where the sun abandoned its fate,
The moon again approached.

Iwaré
 
Where the forests allow no passage,
The temple gate stands, in the middle of the lake;
The stormy wind rocks its double arches,
The swell its reflection back and forth.
 
No priest and pilgrim in sacred boats,
Only spirits sail underneath it.
The waves sometimes want to enlarge the lake,
Especially in the wild evening glow,
 
When forest and gatepost bemoan together,
That between them and the wide sea
The distant waterfalls thunder,
That lean against unyielding mountains
The silence and darkness around Lake Iwaré.
                        (Pour Paul et Claire)

Morning (Yokohama Bay)
 
Fuji peak above morning mists.
Is there anything more pure,
Removed from the world.
Why then still mountains,
And houses and dwarves,
And gray hulls of battlecruisers?
Only again below
In the sea a second
Fuji peak.

Email to a bookseller by Hans van den Bos

 Original title: E-mail aan een boekverkoper

Email to a bookseller
 
I received your shipment an hour ago;
the books themselves were in perfect condition,
however… the packaging was so damaged
that they could have fallen out.
Now, I don’t trust An Post that much,
as the postman (also town crier)

looked a bit guilty.

Or perhaps it was the Celtic Customs,
who are very suspicious of Dutch parcels,
because they might contain pornography, tobacco
or the devil’s drink (which is not allowed
to be drunk or sold in the morning).
And what about other stimulants or narcotics
that The Netherlands is famous for?
But books are also very suspicious
in my country of residence;
they are permitted by law (thanks to Europe),
but behind the scenes, the cardinals

are keeping a watchful eye on it.

For example, there was no Irish edition
of James Joyce’s Ulysses; of course you’ve heard
about the famous last chapter.
I think any publisher, who dared to publish it,
would likely have his future releases boycotted.
Boycotting is an Irish invention,
maybe you already knew that,
if not, just google Charles Boycott.
 
In 1992, a cover design for Ulysses was
presented at the Dublin Writers Museum,
by the courageous Lilliput Press; I still own the poster.
The book was published in 1997
with a price tag of what is now five hundred euro,
too expensive of course for the average person.

Two seagulls by H. Marsman

(Original title: Twee meeuwen – from: Verzameld werk -poëzie, proza en critisch proza – 3^de druk 1972 – E.M. Querido’s Uitgeverij N.V., Amsterdam)

 

H. Marsman
[1899-1940]

Two Seagulls
 
September evening; twilight
had tinted the infinity between the waves
and the high sky into a transparent gray;
the sea was still, almost asleep;
its surging waves had with rustling breath
the world of that evening vaguely filled
with dreams. I lay below
at the foot of the dunes, where the beach
curves – the sky glowed a hazy violet;
but towards the distant end it darkened
and the evening red blew somberly bleeding
above the serrated line of the far horizon.
this is the hour when it’s all so still,
so indescribably transparent and peaceful
that it can do nothing else but to die
of such a immensity, such deadly life.
a long tremor - and already it has descended,
falling from the void, unimaginably floating
between waking and dreaming in an
ever-deeper enclosing darkness.
 
Two seagulls have left the nest during that hour.
with calm, slow wingbeats they drift
over the dunes, which have now almost become dark;
they fly seaward, an indivisible pair
that remains in touch with all the forces
that govern the universe this evening,
and more than with those forces with each other;
only not with the landscape behind them,
not with the warm nests of their flocks,
not even with their young; flying westward
in a straight line, like soft arrows,
that pierce the night,
until they, reckless ones, no longer are able to return.
 
in the gathering darkness I walked back home.

A small request for Christopher Marlowe by C. Buddingh'

Original title: Klein verzoek aan Christopher Marlowe - from: Het houdt op met zachtjes regenen - 4e druk 1978 - De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam

A small request for Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe
[1564-1593]

 
They were, those old poets, surely masters
of posing sonorous sounding questions! Kit Marlowe,
two of your most beautiful lines (from Doctor Faustus)
            are still: "Was this
the face that launched a thousand ships and burned
the topless towers of Ilium?" We, later ones,
generally look for it, rightly or wrongly,
            a bit closer to the ground.
 
But they do make a deep impression on us: just yesterday, 

while undressing, when my gaze lingered for a moment on what

my mother called my bare pins,
            I suddenly thought: ‘Was this
the leg that terrified so many young goalies?’
and I was, despite all the nostalgia,
immediately comforted too: the leg might have become as stiff 

            as a board, but the noggin, it’s still going strong.
 
You know, Kit, Augustine once said:
‘We are only a soul, burdened with a body,’
(and although that of a soul is unfortunately highly dubious),
            as you get older, you gradually
get tired of all those limbs and innards,
windpipes, kidneys, stomach, heart and liver, and you think:
How wonderful it would be if man could consist only
            of sexual organs and a head.

And even those sexual organs… If you had to choose,
Kit: ‘No more writing or no more rogering?’
wouldn't you choose that damn pen? Or let
            me put it a bit differently
(and now I'm getting symbolic, but you yourself
were certainly not averse to that either), who
would it be if someone asked you with a pistol to your chest:
            Caliban or Prospero?
 
You know Kit, that's why I actually don't care
that I will never be on a high score list again,
or even that I can barely move that once-famous leg
            because of the lumbago.
It's bloody painful and indecently annoying,
but it's still a minor issue: like the buzzing
of a mosquito around your head just while your very 

            own Helena makes you immortal with a kiss.
 
The seasons, Kit, in human life
may be differently divided than in nature,
at fifty-four you have to admit
            that it’s turning into autumn, slowly but surely.
But perhaps if you ever meet Zeus again, would you then
ask him if he wants to make sure that I too
may stumble into my winter with a head
            where it is still spring.

Paris 1953 by L.Th.Lehmann

Original title: Parijs 1953 -  from: Wat boven kwam – 2006 – Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam. 

Paris 1953
 
Her name was Pat Bostic.
She was from Georgia.
It was in Paris. Where back then

Louis Th. Lehmann
[1920-2012]

many writers still believed
that novels had to be set:
that was more literary!
We walked down
from Rue Gay-Lussac
where in our local pub,
a black American,
Aaron Bridges, played piano.
We descended, parallel
to boulevard Saint-Michel,
to rue de la Huchette
where her hotel was.
She was barefoot,
and halfway down her calves
hung the frayed edges
of the first cut-off jeans
I'd ever seen.
I sang: "Put your shoes on, Lucy,
don't you know you're in the city?"
She said: "That's what they always
sing to me at home."

Hit and run dream by Hans van den Bos

Hit and run dream
 
On a Friday morning
a female deer was killed
on the R634, close to Tallow.
Further on up the road her two kids
were searching for her in panic.
The gardaí immediately closed the road
to investigate the situation.
A catholic priest was called and
she gave the poor mother her last rites.
A bit later an ambulance took her
to the hospital for an autopsy. 
The social services were able
to catch the two kids,
which will be looked after
in the Cork Zoo.

A sheepdog came forward
as witness to the accident
and he will be used to trace
the driver of the car,
who can expect to lose
his or her driver’s license
for at least two years
and will have to pay all the costs.

‘John Akii Bua by Bert Schierbeek

 (Original title: 'John Akii Bua  from: In- en uitgang - 1974 - De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam)

‘John Akii Bua

Bert Schierbeek
[1918-1996]

(olympic and world champion in 400m hurdles in Munich)
 
a moment we thought
(of course)
he's going too fast
he'll probably fall
we thought
(it has to be)
he almost fell
(we saw)
but he didn't fall
(we saw)
he got up again
i.e.:
   he would have gotten up again
we saw
even though he didn't fall
(we saw)
but:
   if he had fallen
(we saw)
he would
but no
he's running faster than ever
(we saw)
it's not possible
but he's running faster than ever
he’s running gold
(we see)
he’s running all out gold
(of course)
of course Akii Bua runs for gold
(the fastest in the world)
 like
(like we said before)
Akii Bua runs for gold
like nobody else
with a radiant face Akii Bua runs for gold
(like we said before)
 
Akii Bua
didn't fall.

The ghosts of the forest by Hans van den Bos

Dylan [2004-2018]
Canus domesticus sapiens

 Original title: Schimmen van het bos

The ghosts of the forest

                                     as told to me by Dylan our dog

Often I heard strange noises 

between the dark trees, during my daily walks

on the hills around my home town.

It gave me a shock every time. There was

no smell and I never saw any creature.

My mother, a believer in the goddog 'Lupus',

used to tell me and my two brothers stories

about dogs with wings, spirits

of evil hounds, holy bitches, and the like.

I clearly remember a story

about a enormous hound with red eyes,

somewhere in a town called Baskerville.

Because of all those stories, I was always afraid

to go outside on my own in the dark

and I had often bad dreams about it.

Is there more in this world than I can see?

Now more than 8 years old,

Thomas, one of my brothers,

and I have a house and garden of our own.

We have two attendants, a human male

and female, who have their rooms upstairs.

They are very intelligent and often have

discussions about all kinds of interesting subjects.

They can talk to each other for hours.

Listening to them, while I'm resting

in my basket, I know now that

my mother's stories were just stories,

because there is no truth to them at all.

She was possibly indoctrinated by her Setteric family

and I think that the humans around her

were not very helpful either.

I heard that our father, a secular Sheeper,

had a kind of a scientific education,

but he had to leave our mother

before we were born, so he could not inform us

about the natural world.

One day, a few months ago,

on a walk with our male attendant,

we heard the noise again

and all three of us looked

in the direction from where it was coming.

'Look over there', our attendant said,

'two jays, what beautiful birds they are!'

You see, now I know what the noise was.

So if you keep your eyes, ears and nose wide open,

than you can learn a lot about the real things.

Other animals than Homo can be sapiens too,

you know!`

In memoriam Pablo Neruda by C. Buddingh'

(Original title: In memoriam Pablo Neruda - 
from: ‘Het houdt op met zachtjes regenen’ – 1978 – 

C. Buddingh'
[1918-1985]

Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam.)

In Memoriam Pablo Neruda

 
You know, Pablo, perhaps the most precious thing I possess
   —aside from wife and sons, of course—
is that little book about you in the series Poète d’aujourd’hui,
which you gave me three years ago in Rotterdam,
with the dedication: ‘de Pablo Neruda a su amigo
         C. Buddingh’— well, real friends, of course
we barely became in those five days,
and yet we almost swapped ties: yours
a plain red one, mine a Liberty print.
you practically put the idea into my head,
but I was too shy to go along with it:
   you were one of my heroes, and that I could simply
   talk to you and drink a whisky in your room
was already so unbelievable
   that I crawled further and further into that very shell
   that you were trying to pull me out of.
 
People often asked what you looked like now, and I'd say:
   ‘A gentleman in a cap,’ and that was true enough,
but then ‘gentleman’ in the true sense of an aristocrat:
you are, together with Mazizi Kunene, I believe, the only
person that I've ever seen with the real allure of a monarch,
         and actually that had little to do,
however monumental, with your poethood:
you only had to open your mouth, when there was a discussion
and everyone listened—and not
because you were a more powerful magician with language
than anyone else, or an ambassador in Paris, no, they listened
   because you spoke not only for an entire continent,
   but for every disadvantaged person in the world:
yours was the conscience that each of us so much
   wanted to have, but couldn't, or didn't dare—and for that
   alone you were the greatest of us all.
 
We knew you were ill: cancer, and that we would probably
   never see you again, but you acted and fought
as if all eternity still lay before you.
When you left, you said, ‘see you’, but two years later,
your friend Allende was murdered and your house plundered
         within an hour of your death by the same
mob that had previously chased you out of your country,
the Chile that you gave history and stature
and that now became the measure for what true virtue is: either you are
pro-Neruda, and then you would rather starve
than engage with slaughterers in tailored suits,
   or anti: there is no middle ground,
   and believe me: one day, maybe
not they themselves, but their descendants will pay
   for what the hired assassins’ hands
   have inflicted in that land of your dreams.
 
Yes, you preached revolution, but also and above all,
   love and awe for everything life
had to offer humanity: beauty, art, companionship:
you no longer had to look for the philosopher's stone,
because every rock or pebble you found
         on a beach or in mountain ravines
seemed to you a greater miracle than raising the dead,
or walking on water, and an onion had for you
the same ranking as a solar system:
wherever you looked you saw a Garden of Eden,
only: behind every Adam and Eve stood
   almost everywhere a man with a whip, who therefore
   had to disappear first, and then life
would become as simple as the colour red—and hatred
   you had to feel, yes, but never foster, because
   it was that which precisely kept blocking future's path.
 
If there was anything you weren’t, it was dogmatic, if there was something
   you didn’t want, well then: as little for everyone:
no, you thought that even for the poorest farmer or stonemason,
even the best would scarcely be good enough,
for you the entire human race was a race of kings,
         that’s why you steadfastly stood up for them,
they had not only to throw off their chains, that would be
wonderful of course, but only a beginning, the moment
when true life could finally make a start,
and every shit-shoveler or whore be crowned with gold.
That was your dream, for which you kept fighting and fighting,
   and I know for sure that even in the hour of your death,
   you continued to believe in that day when all the rejected,
displaced, downtrodden, vilified, hunted—and without
   Jesus or anyone else descending — will
   inherit paradise here on earth.

Alpine Hunter's Song by Paul van Ostaijen

(Original title: Alpenjagerslied - from: De spiegel van de Nederlandse poëzie, dichters van de twintigste eeuw - 
samenstelling: Hans Warren - 1989 - Uitgeverij Meulenhoff, Amsterdam.) 

Paul van Ostaijen
[1896-1928]

Alpine Hunter's Song

                         For E. du Perron

A gent descends the street
a gent mounts the street
two gents descend and mount
that is one gent descends
and the other gent mounts

right in front of the shop of Hinderickx and Winderickx
right in front of the shop of Hinderickx and Winderickx
                                                          of the famous hatters
they meet each other
one gent takes his top hat in his right hand
the other gent takes his top hat in his left hand
then the one and the other gent go
the right and the left the mounting and the descending
the right one who descends
the left one who mounts
then both gents left
each with his own top hat his own top hat his bloody
                                                                     own top hat
passing each other
right in front of the door
of the shop
of Hinderickx and Winderickx
of the famous hatters
then both gents put
the right and the left, the mounting and the descending
once past each other
their top hats back on their heads
you heard it right
 
each puts his own hat on his own head
that is their right
that is the right of these two gents

Ode to Dordrecht by C. Buddingh'

(Original title: Ode aan Dordrecht - from: ‘Het houdt op met zachtjes regenen’ – 1978 –

Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam.)
 

C. Buddingh'
[1918-1985]

Ode to Dordrecht

Dordt – what can I say: I was born there

and have lived there now, with the exception of a few interruptions,

for about fifty-six years: then you really don't know any better:

   Bankastraat, Voorstraat, Bagijnhof, Kromhout,

same houses, same people, same trees, same shops: K. Schippers

    wrote in a poem entitled Bij Loosdrecht:

                ‘If this were Ireland

I would look more closely.’ The nice thing, I think, about Dordt

                is that I don't have

to look at all anymore, but can simply think of everything

     that comes to mind: the city doesn't bother me,

             just as I, I hope, don't bother the city:

             we are like two good neighbors

     who nod benevolently at each other, sometimes have

 a quick chat, but otherwise go each their own way.

At least, that's what you'd thought, but it's not like that: what

you experience when you're still in your warm knickerbockers

it doesn't leave you cold – you might

    wish that it did: Dordt, want nothing to do with it,

I just live there, that’s all – but you only have to see

    the Grote Kerk rising from afar amid

                the tangle of roofs and facades,

and you immediately feel like a child that after a school trip

                — Very enjoyable: lots of ice cream, lots of chips –

gets off the bus and with suitcase or bag in hand 

    runs into the street where his house is: the party

            may be over, but here he's at home:

            look, there goes the milkman, he has

        got a new float and there

is the tree where once the firemen rescued Marietje's cat.

They're little things: I know, a friend

from Twente who went to Normandy every year

and to whom I showed the harbours, exclaimed in surprise: ‘But Dordt

    is much more beautiful than Honfleur!’ That may be true,

but if men only loved beautiful women

    few would get married: if you love Dordt

                you don't just love the Groothoofd,

the Damiatenbrug, the Bolwerk, the Pottenkade,

                but you have an equally soft spot

for the Stoofstraat, the Hoge Bakstraat, the Wilgenbos: places

    that no tourist has ever taken a slide of,

            because Dordt is not just the river

            with everything that comes with it,

    but a clumb of atmosphere, a climate, in which

you might need to have even been born to be able to breathe there permanently.

But let's be honest: is it that much better in Buenos Aires, 

Tokyo, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Paris?

(Not to mention Loon-op-Zand

    or Sint Anna Parochie) –surely not:

wherever people live you can only survive 

    with a disposition or a barrel of

                pep pills and tranquillizers,

and moving brings nothing but headaches and costs a lot of money.

                No, it's best to live

where your roots are, where you can think: oh yes, that's where

    I always stood waiting for Stientje, and this is where

            I ran into my mother.

            The rest is just backdrop,

    whether it's called Piazza San Marco

or Broadway or Penny Lane or Spui or Bois de Boulogne.

Dublin revisited by Ben Ros

Ben Ros (1952-1994) in Connemara - 1992

photo © Johannes van den Bos  

Dublin revisited

Introibo ad altare Dei

and bewildered by the same lass

who showed Stephen her thighs

at the bay of the snotty green sea.

And later that day a pint in McDaid's

under the boldly painted eye

of Brendan Behan.

Drink in, absorb; it's still possible now.

‘A pint of plain is your only man’,

as Flann O' correctly once wrote.

Because when soon the days

are shining too clear

in the low, the low countries

and the wind blows too, but not bleak,

then by emptying the bottle

my whole goddamed trunk will be filled

with yearning for that far-away country

of littres and literature-

Ó Eire, land so dear

of liquor and literature!


Original title: Dublin revisited. Published in: Literair tijdschrift 'Van Overheidswege' - 1e jaargang nr 4 voorjaar 1983 Rotterdam

The eccentric by Rein van de Wetering

Rein van de Wetering
[1937-2023]

Original title: 'de zonderling'

From the collection: 'Achter de hand', 1978

Uitgeverij Corrie Zelen, Maasbree

The eccentric

his garden is overgrown with weeds

undermined by moles

instead of flowers

there are dried-up thistles

in his room, from the ceiling

cobwebs hang down

and the dampness from the walls

affects his spine

he experiences sympathy from the children

the parents shake their heads

Fairly peaceful at sea by L. Th. Lehmann

 

Fairly peaceful at sea                                                                

L.Th. Lehmann [1920-2012]

Blood-salty sea, which they call Mother,

mother without arms to catch,

without legs to chase,

without a throat to scream,

without hands to grab us,

without teeth to crush us.

The sea does nothing like mothers do,

but those waves are mouths too

and certainly she can swallow us up,

but often enough she can't be bothered.

(Original title: 'Redelijke zeevrede' - from: 'Gedichten 1939-1998', 2000 - Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam)

To Dublin by K. Schippers

                                                                                                                                                                                         

To Dublin                                                                             

K. Schippers (Gerard Stigter)
1936 - 2021

for Philip Mechanicus

I flew once from Amsterdam to Dublin.

Later I wrote:

Above the North Sea and the English coast

I looked down

and I saw the map from the Bos Atlas:

the word North Sea

printed a little skewed in the water

and the names of the coastal cities

also in the sea

because on the land

there was no room anymore.

If I go again

then I might write:

Above the North Sea and the English coast

looking down,

saw the sea and the English coast.

Or:

The sky was like the colour of my socks,

but I couldn't see

whether it was ebb or flow.

Reality does not suffer

among those observations.

They are only

different points of view.

(Original title: 'Naar Dublin' - from: Poëzie is een daad van bevestiging - Noord- en Zuidnederlandse poëzie van 1945 tot heden - gebundeld en ingeleid door C. Buddingh' en Eddy van Vliet - 1984 - Uitgeverij Manteau, Amsterdam.